Maybe it is time we created a Windows 8 Optimization Guide… For now though, check out Optimize Drives by going to you Win 8 StartScreen and typing in ‘Optimize’ or even… ‘Defragment’. If there are no ‘dirty blocks’ pending garbage collection, nothing occurs. It also creates no additional workload as all it does is tells the OS to send the TRIM command to the SSD. Windows 8 does not allow the defragmenting of an SSD and simply triggers TRIM instead.
Most recently, we saw this through the response to our recent post on TRIMcheck, a free software program that writes date, erases it and then returns to the scene of the crime a few seconds later to see if TRIM triggered ITGC.Īt the end of the day, when someone brings up the fact that it is bad to defragment your SSD in Windows 8, you can tell them they are not quite correct. Since word of TRIM got out some time ago, understanding whether or not TRIM was working on their SSDs has been of major concern to most.
So why might you need Windows Optimization if you know that TRIM is working on your SSD? Comfort. Windows 8 went one step further by providing the ability to schedule this activity that allows you to set TRIM for a specific period, be it a day, year or month. Normally blocks of deleted data are wiped shortly after deletion or in idle time, thus the origin of ITGC or Idle Time Garbage Collection. This is very important in the case of an SSD, because unlike that of a hard drive, new information cannot simply be placed over old information, that space must be cleaned which can slow your drive significantly if it occurred while you were writing that information. The OS then initiates garbage collection which wipes clean the space that files were recently deleted. If you are utilizing an SSD, you can manually run ‘Optimize Drive’ which sends the TRIM command to the OS. More specifically, Windows Assessment Tool determines initially whether you are using an SSD or HDD and then sets the environment accordingly.
Windows 7 Defragmentation Scheduling has now developed into Windows 8 Optimize Drive and Optimize Drive is good.įirst off, Optimize Drive recognizes if your storage medium is a hard drive or SSD and, if it is a HDD, disk defragmentation can be scheduled and will occur. Windows 8 has changed the rules just a bit though. I recently download Chameleon SSD Optimizer. I hear a lot of problems about enabling Trim on Yosemite etc. Unaware of the current issues with Third-Party SSD support on Yosemite I went ahead and bought a 128 GB Crucial MX100 SSD. We have been saying this since 2007 and there have been some interesting threads throughout the years regarding our many SSD optimizations, just about everyone one of which is the mainstay of any SSD Optimization Guide these days. Chameleon is able to read sata system profiler info and you can easily check trim status, disk speed or properties. Historically, the company party line is to always shut down Windows Defragmentation.
Being a Windows 8 holdout, I elected to sidestep Windows 8 optimization questions until late and have recently discovered a tool in Windows 8 that benefits the SSD user, at least by way of comfort. It is inevitable that we receive a great deal of questions regarding both Windows and SSD optimization on a regular basis here at TSSDR Headquarters.